


Make Do

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-09
Updated: 2010-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:44:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean gets a clue to what's going on in Sam's head, and wishes he hadn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Do

**Author's Note:**

> Written early s6, before the major reveal.

  
Sam won’t. Stop. Watching. Him.

Mostly Dean finds it hard to recognize New Sam from one hour to the next, let alone from before, but the staring is a constant. Sometimes he looks at Dean like he’s water in the desert, or like he’s a mirage, out of reach. Other times Dean feels more like a bug under a microscope, and not one of the more intelligent beetles Sam’s come across, either. Both those hurt like hell. Or, well, they hurt. And since right now there’s one sledgehammer pulse of pain under the new cast on his leg, and another, smaller but more precise and nauseating, tapping away behind his right eye, Dean’s really, really not in the mood. Even though this particular stare is more neutral, like a cat trying to decipher a hieroglyph.

Sometimes Dean hardly feels the disconnect. Other times the rift goes right down to the freaking cage.

“Can you stop fucking staring at me and get me my pills?” Dean growls.

Sam just looks at his watch. “Your next dose isn’t for forty-five minutes,” he says.

New Sam is precise about these things. And he won’t let Dean mix painkillers with alcohol. But he’s frowning at Dean now, more like he’s seeing him and not just watching him.

“I could get you some water,” he offers. “Or there’s juice, or tea. I could heat you some soup.”

Dean doesn’t really want any of those, but he does, pathetic though it may be, want the Sam who pretends he cares.

“Water would be good,” he says, and Sam gets up and goes into the bathroom, runs the water till it’s cold, and even props Dean up while he drinks and pulls the comforter back around his shoulders when he’s done.

“Thanks,” says Dean, and Sam nods and sits down again.

“Did you talk to Lisa?” Dean asks after a bit. Lisa doesn’t like Sam much and maybe Dean shouldn’t have stuck him with notifying her that Dean will be swinging by there a few days later than he’d said. But Dean can remember Dad’s voice tight with pain or slurred with drugs, what it felt like when he didn’t sound like Dad, and he’s not calling till he can talk to Ben without Ben hearing that.

“I called while they were discharging you. She said get well, and Ben’s first game is next Friday.” Sam’s tone is curt, all New Sam efficiency, but he’s fidgeting and his eyes are shifty. Obviously something’s up.

“What? Spit it out, Sam,” says Dean, and he knows he’s snarling, that’s he’s pushing Sam, but he’s sick of Sam’s everlasting air of mystery, and what, now he’s extending it to weekends at Lisa’s and Ben’s soccer championship?

Sam stares at him. Of course. Wide-eyed and earnest and not quite right. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea, you going back there,” he says.

“What the hell, Sam? Why not?”

“Because you don’t know about them, Dean. You think they’re people, you always think they’re people, but they’re not, they’re demons. You don’t know about it till after. You can’t let them get too close. I didn’t know either, till he showed me.” There’s nothing in Sam’s voice but earnest logic. For a moment Dean feels cold, sinking fear. Then in a blink he’s angry, furious.

Fucking Sam, who moves him into and out of his home like he’s a chess piece, then dares, then fucking _dares_ to talk shit about Lisa. Dean’s shaking, but his voice comes out even and deadly.

“If there’s anything not human hanging round me, Sam, it’s you,” he spits out, and he lurches off the bed, swings at the thing with Sam’s face, overbalances. He crashes to the floor, and the pain from his leg flashes out into his whole body. The blood is rushing in his ears like the ocean in a seashell, but through it he hears Sam running on, quick and bland and fucking crazy. He’d wanted Sam to crack, to give him some hint what’s going on in his head. He takes the wish back.

“Samuel’s a demon, maybe, I think. I’m pretty sure. You know that, Dean? But we have a working relationship. He’s family. A lot of them are, or friends. I can handle him. I don’t know about Lisa. I can’t remember if I’ve looked at her properly. I can’t remember if I’ve seen her eyes. But you’ve got to be careful, Dean. Promise me you’ll be careful. They shouldn’t be watching _you_ , that’s not right, that isn’t what’s meant to happen,” and Dean feels Sam grip his shoulder and shake, like an anxious dog.

For the moment Dean wishes this thing with his brother’s face and his brother’s voice and his brother’s hands had never crawled out of the pit, had never found him. He lies face down on the floor, face mashed in the carpet, while the sick, red pulses of hatred alternate with the white-hot pulses of pain, and the thing jabbers on in Sam’s flat voice.

“I mean you’re right, it could just as well be me, it could be me all along. I don’t know where to put you. I have to put you in the right place, where you’ll be safe.”

And that, that could be Sam. So damn sure he’s right. So damn sure he’s all wrong. Dean should recognize him, he should help him. But maybe he’s done. Because all he wants is to put his hands round this smug, paranoid changeling’s neck and choke it till it gives him back his brother. Or till it gives him back to Lisa and Ben. Instead he breathes out, carefully, and says in a voice he doesn’t recognize, “Help me back into bed.”

Sam freezes, startled, but he shuts up, gets his arms around Dean, and hauls him back onto the bed, settling him against the pillows. “Pills,” rasps Dean, and this time Sam gets them. Dean swallows them dry and closes his eyes, shutting out the room, Sam, the whole fucking mess, reducing the world to simple, manageable components. Dark and pain.

After maybe twenty minutes the pills start to kick in. The pain eases out of his tight grip and begins to float away, farther and farther, bobbing off into the distance. He opens his eyes.

Sam’s in the chair by the bed, staring at him, puzzled and desperately intent. Like he’s lost in some foreign terrain and Dean’s his compass. Jesus fucking Christ.

“Sam,” he says, and he’s amazed by how normal his voice sounds. Sam blinks.

“Yeah?” he says. Like he doesn’t even remember the last half hour, and maybe he doesn’t.

Tomorrow Dean will decide if it’s safe to let Sam near Lisa. If it’s safe that Sam knows where Lisa lives. Right now he needs to pretend, to summon the illusion of normal against the sick dismay of what just happened.

“There’s a Charleston Chew in my bag. Remember those? You used to love the gross strawberry ones. Could you give it here?”

Dean holds his breath, because sometimes this does it. Give Sam a prop or a prompt, lure him out, and sometimes, just sometimes, Old Sam will rise to the bait.

“Charleston Chew? Do they even make those any more?” Sam’s rummaging in Dean’s bag. God, it’s working. Dean lets out the breath he was holding. Sam turns back to him, holding out the candy bar like it’s a snake he’s got by the tail, and his face is bitchy and incredulous and familiar. Dean laughs and hopes Sam doesn’t hear the shaky residual panic, the sour fade of adrenaline.

“Yeah, haven’t seen them in years, but I found them in this one store in Cicero,” he says, and, Jesus, Sam, don’t take Cicero and twist it and start in on Demon Lisa again. Sam doesn’t, he just shakes his head.

“Liar. You lifted it from a museum. A Natural History museum. Somewhere between the Triceratops and the Mastodon.” Maybe Sam’s pretending, too, maybe he’s reconstructing the banter from whatever remains he found layered in the strata of the rift, geeky paleontology kid that he used to be, but it feels good, it’s working like the painkillers are working, and Dean relaxes into it.

“If you stop talking trash about my candy I’ll let you share it.”

“Dude, I don’t want to share it. There’s a BCE in the sell-by date.”

“If you can’t respect the Chew, you can’t have the Chew, but I’m gonna eat it. Gimme.”

“You’ve already got a broken leg. I’m not letting you crack your teeth on fossilized candy,” and he sounds so much like Sam that Dean almost believes it, almost buys his own act, too. He swipes the candy bar from Sam’s hand, and Sam doesn’t really resist, he’s even smiling.

There’s a whitish cast to the chocolate and the once-chewy center is pretty much the dental menace Sam said it was. It’s almost flavorless, hardly even sweet.

Dean leans back against the headboard, nursing the distant throb of his leg, eating fossilized candy. Watching Sam. Maybe not quite Sam. Maybe not Sam at all. Maybe still better than nothing. Dean’s made do with less.


End file.
